All future residential buildings in Montpellier must feature works of art
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Interview with Peter Kurz, Mayor of Mannheim, Germany
Dr. Peter Kurz has been the Mayor of the City of Mannheim since 2007. In this interview, he explains the transformation of Mannheim into a more sustainable city that started 12 years ago.
As one of the main organisers of the 9th European Conference on Sustainable Cities & Towns – “Mannheim2020” together with ICLEI Europe, he invites all interested parties to be part of the event taking place online from Wednesday, 30 September to Friday, 2 October.
We started a change-process nearly 12 years ago to foster cross-sectoral thinking and impact-driven planning in Mannheim’s administration and to boost participation. By expanding our international work, we adopted global agendas and worked on their localisation.
Hence, we developed a mission statement “Mannheim 2030” in a participatory process of 18 months to reflect and implement the global 2030 agenda comprehensively. Seven goals and seven fields of action form a coherent and sustainable strategy for the city.
We invited different stakeholders to describe and realise action plans based on the mission statement, because realising the SDGs demands a fundamental change of our economy and lifestyle, we need to involve all stakeholders and citizens.
In 2019 we set up an urgency plan to fight climate change. We try to accelerate the progress of the long-term sector strategies regarding mobility, energy, real estate, city green, climate change adaption, administration. Within the next 12 years, we will switch our mainly coal-based district heating system to renewables, and we will reach more districts.
Right now, 70% of the buildings are connected to the grid. Until 2027, we will expand our tram system and renew our fleet. Many projects are improving our biking infrastructure.
Incentives and campaigns are promoting biking as a favred transport mode; this is especially important in a city in which the car was invented by Carl Benz 1886. Public green will be enlarged by a square kilometre within the next three years.
The involvement of citizens is multi-faceted. The creation of the mission statement was designed as a participatory process itself with hundreds of people and thousands of proposals coming from our citizens.
Many projects are co-creation projects by definition. Our climate agency addresses mainly private households, and creates campaigns and actions based on participation of schools, employees, members of associations, etc.
Educational projects regarding global responsible consumption are key to gain support for the transformation process.
The city of Mannheim is convinced that sustainability asks for a comprehensive transformation process, which will not be successful if two fundamental findings are not accepted:
The 9th European Conference on Sustainable Cities & Towns is a chance to promote these convictions and to go a step further in addressing the European level and the European nations to support and directly involve the cities and towns.
The conference will showcase the competence and knowledge of ICLEI’s members. It will be an inspirational event and will strengthen the movement towards a sustainable world.
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The price of monthly passes, however, will remain the same so that regular commuters won’t have to worry
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Apply by 10 November and do your part for the transformation of European public spaces
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